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AHSI Principals Convening: A
Student's Perspective
by Angelica Gomez (December, 2006)
During
the days of September 28-30, 2006 I had the opportunity to be one of
the first students—along with Albert Saldana, a student from the Met
Center School in Providence, RI—to attend the Principals
Mini-Convening of the Alternative High School Initiative (AHSI).
While being there Albert and I had the opportunity to learn how
principals work, think, learn and act. We learned that principals
try as much as students do. They have to work hard to maintain a
school and be thoughtful about the students who attend.
We learned how to guide our organization’s process with four steps:
Initiation/ Implementation.
Institutionalization.
Management.
Improvement (reflection and assessment)
We learned how all
members in a school community can influence each other and support
students in preparing for college. This circle of support includes
everyone from parents to principals to community members to mentors
to college counselors to students to coordinators to advisors and
all the way back to parents. That is the circle of people who must
work together and learn from each other in order for schools to work
well and make sure students are ready to apply and attend college.
Our last day there we talked about how to improve our organizations
(next steps). Many of the ideas that came up were from different
organizations throughout the AHSI network, while most of them were
from Diploma Plus (the organization with which my school is
affiliated).
Here
are some of the ideas we generated for strong school leadership:
1.
Talk with
principals from other schools every semester and discuss different ways
to develop a plan to make your organization better.
2. Have the students, principals, and teachers build stronger relationships.
3. Say the unspoken out loud, such as whatever is on your mind, especially the things nobody wants to say.
4. Use the relationship that you (the principal, student or teacher) have with everyone in your network to improve your school. Take ideas from all and look into the ideas thoroughly and fully.
5. Participate in interviews and explain to people the reason why they are being hired.
6. Expand collage transition support to all students from grades 9-12.
7. Convene groups of teachers and students and principals within the school to talk about school ideas and what they want to do to improve the school.
8. Be more specific on what you share. Don’t beat around the bush. Get straight to the point.
9. Include young people from the community as well as the ones who are in the school currently and involve them in school meetings and staff development meetings. Let the students in.
All in all, I had a lot of fun on this trip and it helped me understand the basics of the networks within AHSI. Meetings like this show that principals do care. Also, being one of two students to attend these meetings showed me that educators are trying to get to know their students and that they value our opinions. |
